Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
13.1 Introduction
In astronomy and astrophysics visualization-based knowledge discovery occupies a
critical role. Cosmological simulations produce many terabytes of datasets, and the
highest-resolution simulation codes executed on next-generation supercomputers
will result in petabytes of data. Furthermore petabytes of observational data are
already stored in archives (e.g., LSST, LOFAR, or SDSS). Such data volumes pose
significant challenges for data analysis, storage, and access; and a critical step in
understanding, interpreting, and verifying the outcome is represented by scienti
c
visualization (Hassan 2011). Visualization is an interactive process that includes
qualitative, comparative and quantitative stages to analyze data, present results, and
also to engage the public.
Often a number of data exploration tools are employed for visual discovery in
order to identify regions of interest. Such a scenario typically involves distributed
solutions for storage and processing. Recently science gateways have gained
popularity as a solution to seamlessly integrate datasets, tools, and applications
enabled for execution on DCIs. Collaborative visualization enables multiple users
to share a visualization experience and interact simultaneously with a dataset,
giving feedback on what the other participants are doing/seeing. Moreover,
workflow-driven applications allow the reproduction of speci
c visualization
results, which represent a challenging task since the election of certain visualization
parameters is not usually a straightforward process.
VisIVO Science Gateway
1
(Sciacca 2013a, b) is built as a web-based workflow-
enabled framework on top of WS-PGRADE/gUSE for integrating large-scale
multidimensional datasets and applications for visualization and data
filtering on
DCIs. Advanced users are able to create, change, invoke, and monitor workflows,
while standard users are provided with easy-to-use speci
c web-based user inter-
faces that hide all the technical aspects of the visualization software and the DCI
con
gurations and settings. The existing VisIVO Web (Costa 2011) portal has been
integrated within the WS-PGRADE/gUSE generic gateway to offer new, easily
accessible opportunities not only to scienti
c users, e.g., astrophysical researchers,
but also to the wider public, e.g., high-school education or innovative citizen sci-
ence activities.
Gaining a comprehensive insight into large-scale multidimensional datasets
typically requires very sophisticated statistical and data analysis algorithms. Often,
several data exploration and visualization tools are employed for visual discoveries
in order to identify regions of interest. These stages involve distributed data and
computing resources, and require collaboration among astrophysicists. The usage of
scienti
c workflows has been an appropriate approach to model and organize these
kinds of processes, explicitly specifying the dependencies between processes within
an experiment and orchestrating the distributed resources.
1
VisIVO Science Gateway url:
http://visivo.oact.inaf.it:8080
Cited 4 April 2014.
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